Be a World Champion in 12 Easy Steps

Goal Setting Exercise That Will Help You Achieve Your Goals

Goal setting is one of the most important skills you can develop in life and jiu jitsu.  Without concrete goals and a plan to reach them, chances are you won't make it very far.  It has been said that 97% of people have no written goals and have no plan to reach their dreams.

Author, success coach, and entrepreneur Brian Tracy has a simple, easy to follow plan that can almost guarantee that successfully reach your goals if you follow it.  Take a look at these 12 steps and get started today to make your dreams come true, whatever they are, whether they are directly related to BJJ or not.

1.  Have a Desire

So what's your goal?  What do you want more than anything?  In terms of BJJ goals, it can be anything?  I want to get my next belt.  I want to win a local competition.  I want to be a world champion.  I want to be the best grappler in history.  You must believe that there is no goal too big that you cannot achieve.  

If it a life or another health goal, maybe you want to get in better shape, lose 25, 50 or more lbs.  Maybe you want to get your Masters Degree.  Anything you can dream, you can come up with a plan to achieve.  This is the time when you can put logic aside and go after anything you want in your life.  What keeps you up at night?  What dream do you think about during the day?

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2.  Believe You Can Achieve

You must start this process with the belief that you will be able to achieve your goal.  If you start with a sense of doubt, chances are you will have already doomed yourself to fail.  You have to work everyday to keep this belief alive because there will be plenty of days when you don't believe that you can do it.   One of the ways you can build up your faith in yourself is to set smaller goals and build smaller points of success.  You might ultimately want to lose 100 lbs, but that can sometimes seem so far away on the horizon.  Instead of focusing daily on that 100 lbs, focus on the goal in 10 lb increments and start knocking down those goals.

If you've never competed before, saying you want to be an IBJJF World Champion might be a bit far down the road, but first set your sights on winning some smaller, local events, then some regional IBJJF events, and then making your run at the bigger shows.  The process that you will use to achieve success locally will be very similar to the process you will use to set the World Championship goal and by then you will have practiced the process over and over.

3.  Write It Down

This is one of the single most important activities that you can start doing TODAY!  Once you've figured out what  your goal is, it's time to write it down.  Writing your goals down locks them into your brain.  But you need to write them down in a very special way.

You are going to write your goals is PRESENT, POSITIVE TENSE with a DEADLINE built in as a PERSONAL statement.  You are writing what you want in a way that assumes you've achieved it by a specific date.  You are writing what you want, not what you don't want.  All positive.

Let's take a weight loss example.  Let's say someone is 200 lbs and they would like to lose 25 lbs.  This person would write the following goal, "I AM 175 lbs by January 1st, 2019 (or whatever date they set)."

A jiu jitsu example might be, "I am a Tom DeBlass black belt by April 2019".
By writing your goals down in this manner, in this type of language, you activate processes in your mind that psychologists and mindset professionals believe put you in a better mind frame to achieve.

One additional point that needs to be made about writing down your goals.  It is said that the vast majority of people; some say 97% or more do not have any written goals, so writing them down once is still better than not writing them down.  But the reality is, the more you think about your goals, the better.  For that reason, develop a system of writing them down once a day.  Buy a cheap notebook and everyday, write out your major goals in Present, Positive, Personal statements and you will be shocked at how this procedure develops a disciplined mindset towards achieving whatever it is you want to achieve.

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4.  Analyze Your Starting Point

Your starting point is where you have to take honest stock of your current position.  It's difficult to make a plan to lose weight if you don't know what you weigh today.  This is the time to be honest with yourself and not let your ego cloud the start of your journey to achieve your goal.  If you go into a weight loss plan saying "I'm about 200 lbs" and you're really 240, then when you weigh yourself two months in and you're 220, you are going to feel like a failure and possibly give up, when in reality you already lost 20 lbs.

Take stock and start.  That is all.

5.  What is Your Why?

Motivation is fickle.  Achieving your goals requires almost daily reminders as to why you are on this journey.  It would be beneficial to make a list of things in your life that would be impacted by the achievement of your goal.  What will your life be like when you lose 100 lbs?  What will your life be like when you are a Masters World Champion?  Whatever your goal, write down as many things as you can think of that will be impacted and made better by the achievement of your goal.  These are your WHYS and they are important to keep you going when you find yourself questioning the process.

6.  Set a Deadline

Deadlines are crucial.  They give us a target date to allow us to create a plan.  More importantly they give us a sense of pressure and urgency that will push us to the goal.  If you say, someday I'm going to lose 100 lbs, or someday I'm going to win a black belt world title, how likely do you think it will be that you will achieve this goal?  Not very.

Instead if you say something like "I am X amount of weight by Dec. 31st of 2019" then you have put a concrete deadline that allows you to design a plan

7.  Identify Your Obstacles

Another good exercise on the road to developing your game plan is to identify all of the things that you will need to overcome along the way to achieving your goal.  This process will go a long way towards allowing you to be ready for anything that life puts in the way.  It also may reveal to us a famous principal that Brian Tracy refers to a great deal, namely the Pareto Principle which would say that 80% of the obstacles that stand in our way along the road to achieving our dreams comes from us, while only 20% comes from external factors.  By understanding this and understanding that it is truly great news, because it means that 80% of the things that will be standing in our way are totally under our control.

8.  What Additional Knowledge Will You Need?

In this step, it's important to make a list of the things that you believe you will need to learn or add to your life to reach your goals.  Let's say you're prepping for your first competition and have never worked any take downs.  One of the things you may want to do is work some simple take downs and some take down defenses to at least get yourself acclimated to this aspect of the game.

Create a list of resources like books, DVDs and instructionals from BJJ Fanatics or seminars you can turn to in order to add more skills in a particular area.  Maybe adding some private lessons with your instructor or coaches would be another option.  This is where you list everything out IN WRITING so that you can refer to it later.

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9.  Determine Who You Will Need To Help

Jiu Jitsu is a very individualistic sport, but it truly takes a team to build an athlete.  Without their coaches, instructors, and teammates the athletes would never achieve the success that they have.  This is the point in your game plan where you list out everyone you are going to need so that you can seek them out and get yourself the info and guidance you need.

10.  Make a Plan

Now that you've done a great deal of prep work, this is where you put the plan in motion.  This is your road map to get you where you need to go.  You should be able to start at the end point of achieving your goal and work your way backwards.  

Once you have the plan in motion, it is important to stick to it as closely as you can, but to also monitor what's working and what might not be working.  You don't want to mindlessly follow a plan and ignore feedback and warning signs that require a reassessment.  Allow yourself to be flexible and make changes if need be, as long as you are still striving towards your end goal.

11.  Visualize

Make it a habit of thinking about your goal as much as you can.  A great exercise is to envision yourself achieving your goal each night before you go to sleep.  You will often see established MMA fighters who might be getting prepared to fight for a championship belt, finishing each sparring round in training with their arms in the air as if in victory.  This is a visualizing process to get their mindset locked on the end goal and make it more likely for them to achieve.

If you are working to lose weight, a visualization idea might be to put pictures from Fitness Magazines on your refrigerator or on your bathroom mirror.  That way you are greeted multiple times a day seeing abs and striated muscles to remind you of what you're working for.

12.  Never Give Up

Persistence and discipline are key.  You've already chosen your goal.  You've analyzed all of the things that stand in your way.  You've assembled your team and made your plan.  Now it's time to work towards it and execute.  Do not let any failures or missteps take you off the path.  If something's not working, make adjustments but get right back on the path and never quit.  You can achieve anything you set your mind to.

While becoming a world champion will take a lot of work, it can be done.  It won't be easy.  But if you say someday and that's it.  You won't get there.  You vastly improve your chances of achieving anything by working a plan and these 12 steps will help get you there!

One of the best resources to fix weaknesses in your game or give you new knowledge is the use of BJJ instructionals.  Here at BJJ Fanatics, we offer you only the best instructionals available, like Dynamic Fundamentals from Raphael Carneiro.  These are the most important techniques that everyone should have a handle on.  Get your copy here!

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